As the number of weblogs — and their influence — continues to grow, it’s becoming increasingly important for journalists to keep an eye on them.
A free new tool, PubSub (http://www.pubsub.com), can help you monitor the blogosphere chatter and other online information in real time. PubSub scans more than 9 million weblogs, more than 50,000 Internet newsgroups, and all SEC (EDGAR) filings. In the coming months, the company plans to add more data streams.
PubSub can help journalists find new sources, anecdotes, trends, and more. For an idea of the types of things PubSub can help you monitor, check out the links on this page of sample subscriptions: http://www.pubsub.com/sample_subscriptions.php.
Here are 10 ways a journalist can make use of PubSub (as suggested by Anne Green of CooperKatz & Company, which represents PubSub, in an e-mail to me):
- Know the moment a topic of interest is mentioned anywhere across more than 9 million blogs.
- Determine quickly whether a story you are working on is being talked about in the blogosphere -– a sign that it may be about to break into the broader mainstream media.
- Connect with potential story sources by monitoring which bloggers are posting on a particular hot topic.
- Track how an article you’ve written is being discussed in the blogosphere, to better understand its impact.
- Pick up emerging trends by using broad keyword subscriptions to “listen in” on conversations happening across the blogosphere (e.g., “teens and wireless” or “Homeland security and ports”).
- Use PubSub’s SEC/Edgar filing alert to monitor companies poised to file an S1 or to go public -– and be instantly notified when the paperwork is submitted.
- Receive instant notification on press releases issued by companies falling within your beat.
- Better track how a particular story moves from the blogosphere to mainstream media, or vice versa.
- Track any mentions of your name or your news outlet’s in blogs, newsgroups, etc.
- Pull updated stats on the size of the searchable blogosphere (for example, 9,083,318 blogs as of 3/23/05) to cite within an article involving bloggers.
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